iii.

"What was that?" Arthur demanded, though he barely had the breath to speak. After having run full sprint for a good twenty minutes, he was red and breathless. But Merlin continued peering around the corner of the cave, ignoring him. Arthur hooked his fingers into the collar of Merlin's shirt, pulling him inside and slamming him against the cave wall. "Answer me!" he growled.

Merlin met his gaze steadily. "What was it? It was bad, is what it was."

"We have to go back and help anyone still alive. We have to–"

"No one is alive!" Merlin shrugged Arthur's hands from his shoulders and stepped aside. "You shouldn't even be alive! I have no idea why I saved you, it's you filthy humans who got yourselves into this mess in the first place!"

"I don't…" Arthur shook his head. He had other priorities than to worry about the insane things this strange man said. "No, they can't all be dead. Gwaine… he's not dead. Oh!" His hands flew to his head, gripping his hair as he stared in horror at the ground. "Camelot! I must go warn them! I cannot let that– that– thing get to the city!"

"It won't."

He looked up. "What?" Merlin's composure abated his own nerves, despite the man being obviously mad.

"No matter how strong the person controlling it is, it will not go near a civilization. It's against its very nature… well, it is nature."

"What are you talking about?"

"That was a spirit of nature, turned bad by one of your kind. It was corrupted and is being used as a tool." He scoffed, turning his face away. "How despicable."

"So it'll leave Camelot alone?"

"Most certainly, whatever 'Camelot' is. If there are many people there it will, anyway."

Arthur exhaled slowly, dragging a hand through his already mussed hair. "This can't be happening. I've never seen anything like that before. My men… my best knights… I can't afford to lose them at a time like this." The reality of the situation hit him, and he sank onto his heels, covering his face. "How could I let this happen?"

Merlin watched him uneasily. He had never really comforted a human before. In fact, any interaction with them was few and far between. He knelt beside Arthur, an arm's length away, and stretched out his hand to give Arthur's head two pats. It worked on deer, anyway. "You tried your best."

Arthur looked up, swiping Merlin's arm away with his own. "My best wasn't good enough, was it? My men trust me to make the best decisions for them, and I killed them all."

"Well," Merlin said after a pause, "you didn't directly kill them."

Arthur stared at the man, then inhaled slowly through his nose to better control the urge to strangle him. This wasn't the other man's fault, idiotic though he may be, and losing his wits wasn't going to help anything. "We have to go back. If anyone is still alive, I won't leave them to suffer their agony alone."

"Fine," Merlin said stiffly, standing up again and crossing his arms. "But I won't help you again."

"I don't need your help," Arthur growled, standing up as well.

"Good, then!"

"Good!"

Merlin watched Arthur's back disappear around the outside of the cave. He stood unmoving for several more seconds, his nose lifted. But he couldn't get the image out of his head of Arthur on the ground, the look of terror on his face as the corrupted Dryad stood over him. So, with an aggravated huff, Merlin set off after the human.

Arthur walked cautiously, with what Merlin assumed the man thought to be silence. He followed effortlessly, unnoticed the entire trip. When Arthur glanced behind his shoulder, he tensed slightly first, and the warning gave Merlin more than enough time to slide behind a tree.

The human king slowed as he got closer to the site of combat, his fear giving his lacking stealth skills an extra boost that Merlin had to commend him on. He watched the man move between the cover of trees, only fully halting when he reached the first corpse.

He stood without repulsion in the blood-soaked grass, looking down at his fallen comrade. His face was turned away, so Merlin couldn't see his expression, but he wasn't sure he wanted to. He had watched these men die without a single care, but the way Arthur's shoulders were slumped, the slight tremble in his closed fists, had Merlin feeling a compassion he had never felt before for any human.

Arthur lifted his head, and Merlin just managed to skirt behind a tree before the man saw him. He waited until he heard footsteps before he stepped out from behind the trunk and followed.

The Dryad was clearly long gone, most likely having accomplished what it was commanded to– destroy Camelot's best fighting men. Knights: was that what Arthur had called them? Oh, damned if Merlin knew, humans were constantly changing the title of the foolish men who died for some stone walls.

He could have left, now that he was sure there were no corrupted spirits hanging about. But he stayed and watched the human.

Arthur walked straight-backed into the middle of the strewn bodies, sliding his gaze over them. He knelt beside one, uncaring of the split body and its guts, to gently coax the helmet off its head. He bowed his own head and began to pray.

Merlin crept closer, rather intrigued but mostly amused. After nearly a minute of this, he spoke up. "Are you planning on doing this for every one?"

Arthur looked over his shoulder, trying to hide his surprise, though Merlin wasn't so easily fooled. "Yes. What is it to you?" He turned back to the body.

"Well I just think it'd take an awfully long time." He got no response. He waited quietly until Arthur finished the unnecessarily long prayer. "Why not just say one for all of them?"

"Will you shut up?"

"I'm just trying to help."

"Why did you even follow me?"

That finally got Merlin to stop talking, and he fell into an uncomfortable silence. Why did he follow him, exactly? To be sure the area was safe, but he should not have cared about the human's safety. Arthur stood and looked at him, his eyes hardened over as a shield against grief. Merlin had a feeling Arthur suppressed all of his emotions, a good explanation for his general pompousness.

"What was that thing?" Arthur demanded.

Merlin blinked at him. "Excuse me?"

"You obviously know more about this than I do, so tell me what it is, how to kill it."

"I am not going to tell you how to kill it. It doesn't deserve to die. The bastard who made it like that deserves to die."

"I'll kill him, too, don't worry about that."

"I'm not."

They glared each other down for a few more seconds.

"You called it a… a spirit of nature? What does that mean?"

Merlin sighed, breaking eye contact to look at the tree standing solemnly beside him. "You wouldn't understand," he mumbled, brushing his hands across its bark, feeling the forgotten language that swirled over it. "Humans never understand. Their incessant, stupid want of knowing bars all their capacities of comprehending."

"Er… what?"

"Exactly." Merlin looked back at the king, his eyes so narrow and piercing that Arthur involuntarily took a step back. He swallowed, his own fear bringing rise to his anger. How could he be afraid of this twiggy little boy? Though he had to admit that he imagined Merlin much more of a man now, after he had saved his life.

But he wouldn't let anyone– man, boy, or even inhuman– push him around. He moved closer, hoping he looked menacing standing a head taller than the other man. "Fine, if you won't tell me that, then tell me exactly who you are. No running away this time, no beating around the bush."

Merlin crossed his arms, obviously not intimidated. "I am Merlin, Fairy Prince of The Long Woods, by right of my care and skill."

"Fairy prince?" Arthur scoffed. "There is no such thing. Fairies are… for one, non-existent, and two, tiny little winged men who fly. Can you fly?"

"I can kill you with your own blood. Does that count?"

Arthur's smirk faded. He couldn't tell whether Merlin was lying or not, and after all he had seen today, he wasn't sure he wanted to take the chance. "Then if you're a prince, your father must be a king. What is his name, where is his kingdom?"

"My father is no king, he is the forest, and his kingdom stretches to wherever the last tree stands."

"That's preposterous."

"So is a black tree that kills with smoke." Arthur's face really set into stone at that. Merlin adopted the human's lost smirk. "I will take care of the Dryad. You can take care of… this mess."

"Dryad?"

"The thing that killed your men."

Arthur glanced around, his face carefully still. Such an interesting range of emotions, humans had. Even their attempts to be void of feeling portrayed another emotion. Merlin decided he would see much more of this man, even if only to study him.

"Speaking of… that." Arthur knelt down, oblivious to Merlin's thoughts, and traced his fingers across the width of a blade that belonged to one of the fallen knights. "My sword went right through one, and its sword went right through one of my men… so when I was fighting it, why didn't it just have its sword go through my shield?"

"Ah." Merlin leaned over to pick up a solitary shield, undisturbed by the splatters of still-warm blood across it. He rapped his knuckles against the surface. "Your swords are iron, but your shields are wood, fortunately for you. Though the knights were made of smoke, their source was still one of wood. They cannot go through something they are from."

"That's why that branch you hit it with actually made contact." Arthur looked up at Merlin and the shield from where he was crouched, his eyes narrowed in thought. After another moment, he stood and strode to where his sword and shield had been knocked from his hands and were still sitting among weeds. He picked both up, returning the sword to its sheath and the shield to his arm.

Merlin didn't like the dedicated look in his eye. "I told you, I'll handle the Dryad. It does not deserve death, or any more torture than it has already been through."

"I won't touch your precious Dryad. But I will avenge my men's deaths. I will avenge Gwaine's death. They deserve that, if nothing else."

"You will kill the man who corrupted the nature spirit?" Merlin asked.

"I will do more than that," Arthur growled, kneeling beside Gwaine's corpse to take his helmet off. "I will make sure he suffers."

A grin spread slowly across Merlin's face. "I think we can get along after all."